Last dash

Today I’m making a last dash to finish this essay. Why is it taking so long? Well, partly it’s the need to get client work done first, and volunteer work with its deadlines, partly it’s pure procrastination. And it’s a complex thing I’ve taken on. I spent most of late yesterday afternoon and evening redrawing diagrams with my shiny new flowcharting software, and checking their accuracy.

Today I’m taking the day off from work and I’m determined to finish it, or as near as dammit. This means I have to:

finish writing the part of the essay that explains what use the Colonial Office records are to family historians DONE

finish writing the part of the essay that explains the document-handling process at the Colonial Office (backed up by the diagrams) DONE, with extra diagram drawn

finish writing the part of the essay that explains how to find a document in the Colonial Office records filmed by the AJCP – nearly DONE (I may cut most of it out)

finish the diagrams to explain the process of handling correspondence at the Colonial Office and how all the classes of documents fit together – DONE

create a cutdown version of my spreadsheet to use as another appendix – nearly DONE

write a synopsis – STARTED

check all the citations – STARTED

reformat to conform to the style-sheet (double-spacing and all that)

general tidy-up (incorporating editing down to the maximum number of words allowed) – STARTED

Hmmm. I’d better get on with it then!

[12:53 pm] My 4000-word essay is currently 6024 words and counting, not including footnotes and bibliograpy. Something’s got to go!

[4:04 pm] I’ve started update my list (above) when items are completed. It gives me encouragement to know that I am getting somewhere!

[10:50 pm] still going. I took out the comprehensive overview bit and so removed a thousand words on records that are actually not that much use to family historians. A painful process it was, too!